Good morning, New Orleans Hornets. You’ve just taken the second-worst beating in Nuggets playoff history and Chauncey Billups made your defense look like a high school squad. After the humiliation of Sunday’s 113-84 beating wore off, your response is . . . ?

Actually, Butler wasn’t being flippant. He wasn’t being arrogant. The Hornets say they aren’t reinventing their defensive scheme just because the 6-foot-3 Billups hit 8-of-9 3-pointers and scored 36 points.

After all, how often is the 11-year veteran point guard going to come one point within his career high and one 3-pointer from the NBA playoff record for treys?

Thus, the mood at Hornets practice Monday was casual, unless all those half-court shots they were practicing afterward were more intense than their laughter revealed. Hornets coach Byron Scott came into this series with a defensive plan and isn’t going to change it much.

“Not drastically,” he said. “You have to give him some credit. He hit some big shots. The change is picking him up a lot earlier. We let him walk into about three or four jump shots and I know they were 4 or 5 feet behind the 3-point line, but he has that capability.

“We have to pick him up at the half-court mark instead of picking him up at the 3-point line because he’s too dangerous.”

There will be one other slight change, however. Scott said he’ll put all-star guard Chris Paul, instead of Butler, on Billups. Paul joined Butler as Billups burn victims Sunday, but Paul may stay on him longer in Wednesday’s game even though the 6-footer is 7 inches shorter than Butler and has three fewer years experience.

“You get a quicker guard on him,” Scott said. “And, the biggest thing, like I said, is pick him up earlier. They are cross-matched against us, which makes it tougher sometimes to find your man. But we can’t allow Chauncey to come down one-on-one against anybody and step into jump shots.”

Much has been made about the difference in this Nuggets team and the ragamuffin outfits that were one-and-done the past five years. Billups is the primary reason, and he’s getting the nation’s attention.

After Sunday, he certainly has New Orleans’.

“He had an unbelievable night,” Butler said. “His experience shows. His confidence being in so many playoff games, conference finals and championships, shows with his ability to make shots. He took some shots in playoff games that you need confidence to take.”

There’s another reason the Hornets aren’t panicking. One game won’t erase their reputation as one of the best defensive teams in the league. They finished the regular season fifth in scoring defense (94.3 points per game), seventh in shooting defense (.450) and ninth in 3-point defense (.354).

But the Nuggets shot .507 from the field Sunday, including 11-of-21 beyond the arc and made the Hornets look passive at times.

“It’s been up and down,” Scott said of his defense. “At times I’ve been very happy with it. Other times I haven’t been. It hasn’t been as consistent as I’d like it to be, but then we haven’t been that consistent as a team over the last month or so.”

When New England won the toss, Patriots captain Devin McCourty thought: “As soon as I saw it was heads, I was like: I’ve seen this before. I know what happens at the end of this one.” Does the NFL need to change its overtime rules?

Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, despite being the only center among the NBA’s top 10 in assists per game (7.7) while leading also leading the Northwest division leaders in scoring (19.6 per game) and rebounding (10.0 per contest), ranked No. 7 among Western Conference frontcourt players in the NBA All-Star Game fan voting (1.128 million votes) as of Jan. 17.